Sankaa is an umbrella organization that supports associations linked to African communities and associations operating in Flanders and Brussels (Belgium).
In capturing their personal stories and experiences of its members, Sankaa wanted to better understand how people with African roots experience racism in Belgium. What stands out? Which mechanisms of racism can we detect and in which domains? How have people coped?
An action-research project with Sensemaker was set up and named "Racism Unraveled". Voices That Count guided the whole participatory process.
About 35 volunteers from inside and outside the African community received training as story collectors and together they gathered 400 stories. The results were compiled in a report and a dashboard, and two sensemaking workshops were organised to help guide the future activities of Sankaa.
With this action research, Sankaa wanted to give people from the African diaspora a voice, but also seeked to inform, sensitize, give recommendations and build bridges with other organisations. Hence, other stakeholders were invited to use the insights from this action-research. All this to respond to the needs of people experiencing racism.
Download the report (in Dutch):
